


The Things They Carried Away From Beacon

by Kiiratam



Category: RWBY
Genre: Bumbleby Week 2019, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 09:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19850197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: After the Fall of Beacon, Taiyang and Ruby went back to retrieve team RWBY's things, including Bumblebee. Arriving back home, they sort through what they managed to salvage, and Taiyang learns a bit more about his daughters' team-mates.Takes place during the autumn to winter time-skip in Volume 3, Chapter 12. (My BMBLB fic index)Written for Bumbleby Week 2019, Day 2: Meet the Parents.





	The Things They Carried Away From Beacon

Bumblebee coasted to a stop on the gravel outside the Xiao Long-Rose garage. Taiyang tapped his daughter's hand, and settled himself into a wide stance, keeping the motorcycle steady. Letting go of her father's waist, Ruby took a deep breath and checked the straps of the Atlasian military kit bag on her back.

  
"Okay, dad. I'm getting off." Taiyang nodded. In any other circumstances, he would have been howling with laughter. The bag was at least as big as Ruby, and her efforts to not fall over were punctuated by her grunts of exertion. She grabbed her father's back after one close call, panting. "I'm still trying."

  
"Your friends are inside. We can just give them a call."

  
"No, no, I got it!" There was a flurry of flying rose petals, and Ruby re-appeared in front of the garage, staggering under the weight. She half-fell back against the garage door, unbuckled her helmet, and let her arms fall slack. "Why did I think this was a good idea?"

  
Taiyang dismounted from Bumblebee, taking his own helmet off and setting it across the handlebars. "It was a good idea. Your execution just needs work. Here, I'll get the bag, if you get the garage open." He grabbed the top of the bag, and Ruby slipped out of the straps and passed it to him. Taiyang nearly lost his grip as he took the weight. "Sugar and spice! What's in here, Ruby? Bricks?"

  
"Books, mostly." She stooped and pulled the garage door open in a mighty racket. "You should really oil that."

  
Taiyang had settled the rucksack on his shoulders, and returned to Bumblebee. Hands on the handlebars, he guided the motorcycle into the small garage. "I've been meaning to, but I couldn't find my oil can."

  
"Oh." Ruby colored. "I, uh. It's in the bag. I think I grabbed it when I packed for Beacon, since I couldn't find mine." She grabbed both helmets and set them on the workbench. "Hey, do you still have that trailer? I'm sure Jaune and Ren and Nora will want to get all their stuff."

  
Nodding, Taiyang gave his daughter's motorcycle a friendly pat. "Yeah. I may not have the truck anymore, but I had a load of wood on the trailer at the time-"

  
"And you haven't gotten to it yet."

  
"It's like you know me. Anyway, normally you wouldn't want to use a motorcycle to pull a trailer, but Yang put some ridiculous mods in her bike. The torque on this thing is unreal." He snorted. "If we put wheels on the house, Bumblebee could probably pull it."

  
Ruby had pulled out her scroll, and was flipping through pages. "Looks like there's another push scheduled for the end of next week. That'd be a good day."

  
"You want to stay here with Yang and Zwei? I'll take Bumblebee, the trailer, and the three of them, and we'll get what we can salvage. I just hope we can find room on the Patch Ferry."

  
Ruby nodded. "It's a plan. Let's go in and get dinner started, I'm starving."

  
"Run on ahead. I'll be there in a bit, I'll just get the saddlebags unpacked." He hefted the rucksack off his back, and turned his attention back to Bumblebee.

  
"Okay, dad. ...I love you." She turned around and hurried off to the house.

  
Taiyang felt his throat catch. He called after her, "Love you too!"

  
Sighing, he turned his attention to the saddlebags. Time had been at a premium, with Grimm prowling about campus, so he'd just shoved everything he could grab in. He hadn't had room for a lot of it - he'd have to take another bag and get the rest when the kids cleared out their rooms. A big bag - he didn't know why Yang had two extra handlebars, and three spare tires, but he wasn't going to leave anything if he could help it.

  
Taiyang took inventory as he unpacked. Hex keys, wrenches, spare headlight, brake pads - he cursed, pulling out a broken pair of aviator glasses. One lense busted, and the frame must have caught in something, all twisted. He'd have to get a replacement pair for Yang.

  
Settling the broken sunglasses aside, Taiyang kept at it. A bundle of rags, wrapped around a spare chain. He hadn't wanted to just toss the chain in and get grease everywhere. Spark plugs, filters, more filters, brake fluid, a few handfuls of sprockets, filters that had been torn by the sprockets, spare chain still in the box. Socket set - he hadn't seen the wrench to go with it, have to look for that next week. Needle-nose pliers, tire gauge.

  
Taiyang reached the bottom of the bags, pulling out a few odds and ends. Nuts, bolts, washers, a pile of crumpled receipts. He didn't know if Yang wanted those, but at this point, he didn't want to throw anything away. Smoothing out the receipts, Taiyang couldn't help but glance at them - bookstore, auto shop - lots of those - food trucks - _didn't know she liked fish tacos that much_ -, movie theaters, a bakery. _Why did Yang buy a decorated cake?_ He looked at the date. _Oh. Delivery on Halloween. She ordered Ruby's birthday cake._

  
He didn't know why that made his eyes tear up. With the fall of Beacon, and so much death, and Grimm running through the streets, why was this such a big deal? He clenched the edge of the workbench, squeezing his eyes shut.

  
"Hey, Mr. Xiao Long?" Nora's voice cut through his pain. "Dinner's all ready. Ren's been working on it all day. He's had me running errands so I haven't had time to eat too much of it. Did you know you've got a patch of wild onions in the woods over there? Ren smelled them, and sent me to get a bowl-full. And then he made me mince garlic, and crush peppercorns, and shuck corn, and peel potatoes, and I have been around food all day, and I am _starving_. Do you want to come eat?"

  
During her monologue, Taiyang had managed to get control over himself, and smiled down at Nora. "I'm hungry too. Let me just close up, and I'll race you to the house."

  
"You're on!"

  
"But you have to carry the rucksack. Give an old man a handicap."

  
Nora grabbed the heavy bag, and slung it over her shoulders, without seeming to notice the weight at all. Taiyang started bracing himself to lose.

* * *

  
The carnage of dinner having been cleaned up, Ruby and her father sat on the floor in the living room, the Atlasian rucksack between them. Zwei was sprawled on the couch, legs twitching as he chased Beowolves in his dreams.

  
Ren and Nora had already gone to bed - Ren tired after a full day of cooking, Nora because she went where Ren went. Jaune - Jaune, Taiyang was worried about. He'd just taken his sword and scroll, and gone outside. Taiyang had watched out the window long enough to see him set himself up at the edge of the clearing, and start drilling. But there was nothing Taiyang could do now - have to let the kid come to terms on his own, just be ready to help him. Couldn't force healing.

  
Yang - they'd taken Yang food, after they couldn't get her to come down to dinner. Ruby had eaten up there too, but hadn't said anything when she brought the dishes back down. Taiyang just didn't know what to do. He could guess at what she was feeling - all the pain and suffering of the last few weeks, and the pain of her team splintering - Taiyang understood those. But her personal loss, trying to save Blake from that White Fang madman - he hadn't experienced that, and he had no idea how to help her heal from it. But Taiyang had crawled out of his own despair, and one of the things he had learned was to just keep moving forward, one hobbling step at a time. Pick up the pieces, keep moving forward. But teaching that...

  
"Okay, so I grabbed everything I could." Ruby undid the top of the rucksack. "But Griffons tore up the roof, and it's been raining a lot, so I left a lot of ruined stuff. A lot of the clothes were a total loss. You got the boxes?"

  
Taiyang reached behind him and grabbed the four boxes, labeled " **RUBY** " " **YANG** " " **WEISS** " and " **BLAKE** " in broad letters. He handed Ruby her own and her sister's. "I'm sure we can send Weiss' stuff back to her in Atlas. What do we want to do with Blake's?"

  
Ruby shrugged. "I dunno. She just left, she didn't leave an address. Or talk about her family. Maybe we can get a hold of her files from Beacon?"

  
"Maybe." Taiyang made a note on his scroll. "All the computers are a mess, so I may have to see if there are paper copies. So what's in the bag of bricks?"

  
Pulling items out of the bag, Ruby held them each up in turn. "Couple of my spare cloaks," she tossed them into her own box. "Yang's motorcycle jacket," Yang's box. "Blake's motorcycle jacket."

  
Taiyang held out his hand expectantly. "Did she have a bike too?"

  
Ruby laid the jacket in Yang's box. "What? Who?"

  
Taiyang pointed. "You just said that was Blake's motorcycle jacket."

  
"No, it's Yang's spare. Wait, I said what?" His daughter started to match her cloak. "Oh! Umm, Blake just borrowed it a lot. They went down to the pier for fish tacos."

  
Pulling the next item out, a long leather tube, Taiyang handed it to Ruby. "I recognize that. Still got all the blueprints for Crescent Rose in there?"

  
"Yeah, and my copies of Ember Celica, and what I puzzled out about Gambol Shroud, and Myrtenaster." Ruby placed the tube in her box. "And a bunch of other stuff. Just plans." She pulled out the next items, a decorated silver quick-loader and a straight magazine of the same design. "I made these for Weiss, but I didn't get to give them to her."

  
Taking the quick-loader, Taiyang looked it over. "You do good work, Ruby." He set it in Weiss' box. "How was the magazine suppose to work, if Myrtenaster's a revolver?"

  
"Uh, I hadn't really gotten that far. I just made it as a test, to see if I could get the same dust-infused designs. It took me a couple of tries, but I think I've got the process down. I was going to show it to Weiss, and see what she thought." Ruby set the magazine in her own box. "No point in sending it to her."

  
"Good call. Trying to muck around with other people's weapons isn't polite."

  
"But dad, they're my team! I wasn't going to just steal Myrtenaster and make it magazine fed. I did the work for fun, and I was going to see what Weiss thought. She has some problems putting out as much firepower as the rest of us, so I thought it might help." Ruby grabbed the next item out of the bag, grumbling to herself, "Not that it matters, since her dumb dad kidnapped her back to Atlas." She looked at the book's title, and tossed it to her father. "Blake."

  
" _The Man With Two Souls II: The Man with Four Souls_. Sounds fun." He set it in her box.

  
Ruby pulled a stack of books out, and after a quick glance, passed them all to Taiyang. "All Blake."

  
"I guess she likes to read."

  
"All the time. When we first started, she would have her textbook open in class, and a novel next to it, reading both of them, and she would take notes on the lecture, _and_ doodle on her notes. I don't know how she kept it all straight. Though she did stop bringing novels when classes got more intense."

  
Taiyang pulled a book out of the stack, and smiled. "Oh, _Night of the Naked Werebeowulf and Glompotron: Cage Match Edition_! I loved the Cage Match editions. I guess Blake has good taste!"

  
"Whoops, that one's actually mine."

  
"Are you sure? I think I'm missing this one from my bookshelf."

  
"Absolutely." Ruby was holding her face impassive. "Yang got that one for me."

  
Taiyang flipped the book open, "Let me just read you my favorite part-"

  
"Dad!" What Taiyang didn't know was that the book in that dust cover was not, in fact, _Night of the Naked Werebeowulf_ (etc), but was actually-

  
The centerfold of _Ninjas of Love_ flipped out. Taiyang whistled. "I don't remember that part. But what a katana!"

  
"Daaaaaaaaad, please. Could you just give me my book?"

  
After refolding the centerfold, and handing the book to his mortified daughter, Taiyang reached into the rucksack. "Oh, there's my oil can." He set it behind him, and dug back in, pulling out a garment bag. "Weiss'?"

  
Slightly recovered, Ruby said, "The bag is, but it was the only one, so I shoved all of our dresses and stuff into it."

  
"Okay, we can sort those out later." He put the garment bag on the coffee table. "Next?"

  
Ruby pulled a desk drawer out, stuffed full of papers. "I didn't have a box, and I didn't want everything to get crushed."

  
"I think they're going to buy new furniture anyway. What're the papers?"

  
"I don't know, I just grabbed everything that wasn't wet." She dumped the drawer out in front of them, several pens and trinkets bouncing out of the stack.

  
"Was that glass breaking?"

  
Ruby started digging through the pile. "Oh no! I broke it!" She pulled out a frame with a picture of team RWBY inside, the glass cracked in multiple places. She twisted it in her hands, "Maybe if I just-"

  
"It's okay, Ruby. We can get a new frame. Is the picture okay?"

  
She turned the frame over, pulled off the backing, and removed the picture. "Mostly. I just - I knew it was in there, I made extra sure that it was in the middle where it would be padded, and then I forgot and I carried all the way from Beacon, and just broke it here." She sniffed, bowing her head. "I'm sorry, dad, I just feel like an idiot."

  
Taiyang ruffled her hair. "Did I ever tell you the story of when your Uncle Qrow and I got sent on a data retrieval mission to the ruins of Fort Sumiyoshi?"

  
"Nope."

  
"Summer and Raven were watching over a bunch of people we'd saved from a Beowolf pack nearby. Normally, Summer would have sent Raven and Qrow to do it, but the whole place had been locked down before it was lost, so I got sent to open things up. Anyway, we sneak in, Qrow covers me a few times by causing a distraction for the Grimm, then circling back around. I had to cover a hundred feet on my hands and knees, while there were Grimm all around me. But we make it inside, we make it to the computer we were looking for - and then a Griffon spots us from outside. So it starts shrieking, I grab the computer, and we high tail it out of there. Must have run two miles before they lost us. And Qrow turns to me, once he's got his wind back, and is about to say something he thinks is badass. You know that look he gets."

  
"Oh yeah." Ruby had stopped snuffling, and was hanging on his words.

  
Taiyang smiled, "Anyway, he turns to me, and before he can say anything, he just starts laughing. Coughing, wheezing, rolling on the ground laughing. And I'm just standing there, wondering what set him off. And I look down, and see that I grabbed the _monitor_. The computer's still back at the fort."

  
Ruby giggled. "So did you go back?"

  
"What else were we supposed to do? 'Sorry, Summer, I meant to actually get the data, but I'm an idiot'? Yeah, that wasn't going to work." Taiyang waved his hands. "So, long story short, we go back, spend even more time belly crawling through rubble, get the actual computer, and sneak back out. And did I feel like a dummy the whole time."

  
"Thanks, dad."

  
"Just put the picture on the table. I'll find a frame for it. I must have a few spares around here. What else we got?"

  
Ruby started leafing through the papers, sorting them into stacks. "Umm, homework, more homework, letter from Weiss to her sister, letter from Winter to Weiss, letter to Weiss from her dad, more Schnee Family correspondences, even more Schnee Family correspondence, hey, jackpot!" She brandished a letter. "Letter from the Belladonnas to Blake!" She read off the return address, "Ghira and Kali Belladonna, Kuo Kuana, Menagerie."

  
"They're Faunus?"

  
Ruby instantly flashed crimson. "No, no, can't be! I mean, Blake isn't a Faunus. How could they possibly be Faunus if their daughter isn't!? Maybe they're just on vacation!"

  
Taiyang leaned back on his hands. "They don't allow non-Faunus on Menagerie at all. Definitely not for vacation. ...That's not a bow Blake's wearing in the picture, is it?"

  
"...No. It isn't. She just... doesn't want anyone to know. She didn't tell us at first, either. But Blake wanted us to keep her secret, and I just-"

  
"Ruby, it's okay. I don't have any problem with Faunus. They fight with us against the Grimm, and we treat them like-" Taiyang bit off what he was going to say. "We don't treat them right. I've seen plenty that makes Blake wanting to pass make sense. And if you want, I can just forget this whole thing happened. You have an address for Blake's parents now, that's all I know."

  
She carefully set the letter aside. "I guess we can figure out later if we want to hold onto Blake and Weiss' stuff, or ship it to them. I'll keep looking through papers. What else is in the bag?"

  
"More books - _The Man with Two Souls_. Blake?"

  
"Yup."

  
" _Howling at the Moon_."

  
"Blake's."

  
" _How to Arm Yourself_."

  
"Mine."

  
" _Another Pun_."

  
"Yang's, but if you want to hide that, I won't blame you."

  
"That bad, huh? Umm, _Yums and Nums_. Looks like a cookbook."

  
"Uhhhh. Ren's, I think. Dunno why we had it."

  
"I'm going to guess that _The Sais of Passion_ and _Knight-Errants of Passion_ are both Blake's."

  
"You got it."

  
" _Der Rosenkavalier_? Looks like a libretto and score."

  
"Weiss'. She wanted to sing one of the songs out of it. _The Presentation of the Rose_ , or something like that."

  
"Oh, got your tool kit in here." He reached past her, and dumped it into her box to a clatter. Zwei perked up briefly, then, laid his head back down. "Anything else interesting in the papers?"

  
"Couple of Blake's notebooks, Weiss' checkbook, last month's _Zoom_ -"

  
"Yang's, naturally."

  
"I don't know where all the other issues went. There was a big pile of books and stuff under their bunk bed, but the rain had gotten to them." Ruby frowned. "Stupid rain."

  
"Shame."

  
"A good bit of homework, from all of us. Wouldn't have brought it, if I'd had time to sort through everything. Anything left in the bag?"

  
Taiyang peered into the bag. "Uhhh, box of shoes, couple of pairs of boots." They sorted those into the boxes, guided mainly by color. "Bag of laundry. Probably want to wash all those first."

  
"Yeah." Ruby peeked into the rucksack, then shoved her whole arm in, scrabbling at the bottom. "Some of Yang's stupid stilt-boots. How does she even walk in those?"

  
Taiyang shrugged. "No idea. They do look cool, though."

  
"Got a book. _Romantic Verses of Sapphire FitzBattleaxe_. Must be Blake's. It was under her pillow, so it actually stayed dry."

  
He put the book in Blake's box, desperately trying not to open the book and see what sort of literature kids kept underneath their pillows these days.

  
"Weiss' back-up make-up bag." She handed it to her father.

  
"Her _back-up_ bag? How big was her real make-up bag?"

  
"Believe me, you do not want to know the answer to that question." Ruby reached back in, pulling out three bags: red, purple, and yellow. "Everyone but Weiss' toiletry bags - Yang will be happy to have her brushes back."

  
"I guess they grabbed some of Weiss' things already."

  
Ruby nodded. "And all her spare Dust. Just the Schnee family essentials." She turned the rucksack over, and shook the last items out. "Hex keys - I think those are actually Yang's, but I've had them for ever. Blake's pencil case, Yang's spare keys-"

  
"Oh good, I'm still locked out of the back shed, and I know she had the spare."

  
"-some of my empty mags, and a couple of Zwei's toys from when he stayed with us." Zwei looked up at his name, wuffled happily when Ruby tossed his toys at him, and settled back down. "And that's everything." She looked at the boxes, not one of which was much more than half full. "Not much, is it?"

  
Taiyang shook his head. "I can ask the others to take a look next week, see if they find anything you missed."

  
"No, it's okay. I want them to be able to take their time getting their stuff."

  
"Good thinking." Taiyang started to stand up, then stopped as a thought struck him. "Ruby, were Blake and Yang, um, what's the lingo nowadays? Walking out?"

  
Ruby stared at her father with a total lack of comprehension.

  
"You know, seeing each other. Being gal-pals."

  
"We lived together, dad. They saw each other every day. And I think they were friends. But then Blake left, and now I don't know."

  
Taiyang sighed. "No, not what I meant. You said they went out to get food. Like, were those dates? Are they- were they- are they- in a relationship?"

  
"I don't know, dad. It wasn't like Jaune and Pyrrha, where they just sort of danced around, and didn't _do_ anything. Yang and Blake were good friends, they did all kinds of things together." Ruby turned up her hands. "If you're asking me if they kissed, I don't know. But Blake isn't here anymore, and I know it's not helping Yang."

  
Nodding, Taiyang said, "Okay, Ruby. Thanks." He could see another dimension to Yang's despair now, not just losing friends, but having Blake abandon her. Taiyang just didn't understand why. If Blake had cared about Yang, why leave? You needed to stick by the ones you love, not run away when they were in pain. Maybe Blake was running off the same playbook as Raven. And Taiyang already knew he didn't, probably couldn't, understand Raven. He just hoped Yang could either figure her friend out, or move on.

  
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to turn in." He put the lids on Weiss and Blake's boxes, and stood up, grabbing the bag of laundry. "Want to take Yang's box up to her? I'll get the laundry started, then come up to wish you two goodnight."

  
"Okay, dad. Is Jaune still outside?"

  
Taiyang looked out the window. "Looks like he's headed in, too." _Good thing, too. The woods aren't safe at night._

  
Ruby stood up, holding her sister's box. "Okay. I'll see you in Yang's room. Zwei, do you want to come too?"

  
Zwei gave a little bark of confirmation, and rolled to his feet, ready to follow.

  
"Be there in a few, Ruby. I love you."

  
"I love you too, dad."

**Author's Note:**

> Der Rosenkavalier is a real operetta, by Richard Strauss. The song Weiss was going to sing can be found here ( https://youtu.be/dVOSo8EbQqI ).


End file.
